Tight Jeans

 Tight Jeans - Short Film Evaluation

Destiny Ekaragha:“I think sometimes laughter is the best way to talk about serious issues, because it stays in your head longer. Dramas are great and I’d like to do one, but at the moment I’m loving laughter.” Do you think this is true? Can comedy be a way of finding deeper truths as much as tragedy?

Personally I think that yes, comedy is one of the better methods of exploring darker themes. While darker topics should obviously be treated with a degree of respect and cautiousness, it makes sense to have a joke about them, because, as Ekaragha says, "it stays in your head longer". This is certainly a fine line though, as there have been way too many cases in which risqué jokes have gone too far, where someone tries to make a deep and meaningful comment about society through comedy, and it just comes across as plain insensitivity. This line means that this can either work well in displaying these deeper, more poignant themes, or it can backfire horrifically.

Films like Borat and its subsequent moviefilm do this really well, highlighting serious socio-political issues and divides within society through a comedic lens without ever seeming particularly insensitive, while comedians like Jimmy Carr use comedy to raise awareness of genuine issues while also getting some laughs out of his audience. However both Carr and Baron-Cohen have faced serious controversy as a result of some of their comedic choices, which again shows that comedy is a risky way to raise awareness, compared to tragedies which are much easier to avoid offending people.

Overall though, I would say that Ekaragha is correct in her analysis, but the only reason I would be hesitant to try and attempt this in my own short film is that in this present day environment, in which people are, how do I put this, slightly too easy to offend, attempting to display these issues through a comedic lens may prove problematic when it comes to that fine line I mentioned earlier.